5 Beautiful Landing Pages That Prove Great Design Still Sells

Have you ever pulled up a landing page that made you want to gag?

Probably more than once, right?

When it comes to designing landing pages, most people seem to believe ugly converts better. If it doesn’t have a gigantic red headline, lots of yellow highlights, and a blinking “BUY NOW!” button, then it can’t possibly be converting anyone, right?

Actually, no.

If you look around the web, you’ll actually find quite a few large companies who have meticulously designed landing pages that are beautiful and (one would assume) convert well. No, they don’t place design over function, but they do use solid design fundamentals to draw your eyes to all the right places.

Let’s take a look:

1. Mint

Mint begins with the benefit right upfront: “the best way to manage your money.”

What’s unique about the headline is how they drew an arrow to insert the word, “free.” It draws attention to it, and it also highlights Mint’s USP: you can use it free of charge, unlike competitors Quicken and QuickBooks.

The call to action is also well designed. Had the “Free! Get started here” button been a shade of green like the other areas of the site, it’s very likely that it would simply be overlooked by first-time visitors. The vivid coloring makes it stand out.

By including the word “Free” again, it also restates the USP. Mint could have used a more generic “Create an account,” but at least a portion of visitors would’ve wondered if it costs anything. “Get started here” also sounds easier and less technical, making people more likely to do it.

2. Apple’s QuickTime

Apple is well-known for its clean, simple user interface design, and the QuickTime download page is no exception.

From the copy on the left to the image on the right, it focuses on exactly what you want to do: download QuickTime so you can play videos. Chances are, you already know what QuickTime is, and you already know what it will do for you, so it doesn’t waste time trying to “sell” the software. And it’s refreshing.

Long copy has its place, but if you’re designing a landing page, and you know visitors coming to the page are already sold on downloading a free trial, then why make them wade through pages and pages of copy? Just help them do what they came to do as quickly as possible.

3. Zeer

Zeer is a unique way to search for gluten-free foods.

Its search and sign up buttons are so brightly colored that they stand out very well against the teal background. But what makes Zeer work is how it integrates the sales copy into the design.

Rather than taking a page to describe the offer, they slide it in next to the call to action, telling you the basic account is free, an upgrade is $4.95, and you can get a 30 day trial. The sign-up form is also relatively short, just asking for the essentials before you can continue. Overall, very efficient.

4. TryPhone

TryPhone is a good example of a landing page for a physical product.

Notice that the button reads “Buy This Phone” – not “Add to Cart,” “Add to Basket,” etc. Also note how the main action of “Buy this Phone” is not only colored to stand out more, but by being at the top of the page, it visually takes precedence over the other buttons, like reviews and specs.

Because TryPhone’s whole focus is on letting you virtually “try before you buy,” an interactive help bubble appears if you mouse over the phone. Fortunately, it also includes a close button where you would intuitively expect to find it, so it doesn’t get in the way.

All in all, very spiffy.

5. Jott

You see how the middle option is higher than the rest?

It’s a subtle tactic, but it works. It gently gets your attention and hints that it’s “superior” to the others. Combined with the starburst, it’s also hard to ignore.

While blending a little into the background, the “Try it Free” buttons stand out as the main action to take. Each of the images below also point upward toward the buttons, drawing your eyes to them.

No, it’s not a visual knockout, but it’s still respectable, and it’s an interesting concept. Good work, Jott.

The Bottom Line: Landing Pages Don’t Have To Be Ugly

The one thing that ties all of these landing pages together is they are attractive and designed to convert.

Some copywriters and designers would have you believe that’s impossible, but it’s not. You can use these landing pages as inspiration.

Have you found any others that got your attention and convinced you to learn more?

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I think the key with landing pages is to not overwhelm the users. Imagine getting dropped on an island where you don’t know what to expect and all of a sudden 50 islanders are all screaming at you to do this and buy that.

Amrinder, I think you miss the point of the article, which is to say that graphic design isn’t always the most important factor in a successful landing page. At the end of the day it’s all about conversion, and hopefully the page looks great in the process.

It would be interesting to know if Apple have split tested flipping the order of information on the page, eg, graphic/video on the left and action on the right. It most cases you will get a longer page view time and more conversions.

“One would assume” With that simple parenthetical phrase, the entire article above is completely invalidated and made useless. If you knew how many big companies have lousy metrics on their advertising, you would realize that, without actually knowing the conversion rates, you can’t possibly draw any meaningful conclusions from looking at these pages other than to marvel at their pretty design.

While those 5 pages are certainly pretty to look at, they don’t “prove” that great design “sells” because you didn’t include any “facts” regarding actual conversion rates. So this blog entry should be really be titled “5 Beautiful Landing Pages That I Really Like”.

After taking a look at the actual sites of the companies you mentioned, I realised the screenshots are old. Most of them have moved on and went more towards the Social Media and full content pages which bring more focus on people interaction via Twitter and FB

On the subject of landing pages (and the KISS products in general) – Unbounce (a DIY Landing Page Platform) just added an integration with KISSinsights, that shows how you can easily embed them in your landing page to start leveraging user feedback to improve your pages.

Nice article remarkable effort about the designing of landing pages first two are great. It’s right think that through landing pages you can inspire your consumer and get more chance to earn more profit.
Thank you for sharing.

At KickoffLabs (kickofflabs.com – A kissmetrics customer and integrator in our product) we enable a simple call to action for email signups.

What’s interesting is that a lot of our customers want to act against their best interests by adding additional data collection to the form… when we know that the less data you try and collect the higher your conversion rate is.

It has a auto registration look up meaning within seconds of hitting the site you have your quote, there is a little too much text in the main body but the blue quote box hits you bang in the face as soon as you land

Thanks for the inspiration on great landing pages that sell, But I have to disagree with you a tiny bit. I’ve seen better out there… Zeer is good a clean, but tryphone is cluttered and all that text scares me away… i like the new paypal landing page also very clean and inviting..